


Lines in the Sand

by chinaink



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 16:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5633350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinaink/pseuds/chinaink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you cross lines that you can't go back. Three times Steve crosses those lines and how he finds his way home (with a little help from Kono).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A reinterpretation of some key events in seasons 1 and 2, centered around Steve and Kono.

Steve has never really considered himself a true soldier. The drills, the grueling training, the backbreaking hells he’s gone through – they’ve all been more of a means to an end for him; a way to see how far he could push himself, how much beyond the limits of strength and endurance and willpower he could go. He’s a SEAL; he understands the sanctity of the chain of command, of how missions are made or broken upon the precision of a terse directive, but he also knows how far away those orders could be when it was just you, crawling through a humid, sweltering jungle with 140 pounds of gear on your back, bloodied, dehydrated, delirious. That was when victory hung on the edge of sanity; when it boiled down to guts and instinct, ingenuity and improvisation.

A solider is called to obey orders, carry out commands and lay his life down for God and country. Steve loves his country, but he prefers to keep his eyes open, listen to commands and interpret them on his own. When he lays his life down, he’ll call the shots, weigh the worth. It’s what makes him a bad soldier, but one hell of a commander.

But for all his insouciant flaunting of authority, Steve’s military career has taught him that there are some rules you don’t break, if you want to find your way back home.

When he joined Five-0, it was like jumping headfirst into an alternate universe, where instinct and resourcefulness still mattered, but sometimes got buried so deep behind layers of protocol and bureaucracy even Steve has trouble shoveling out the bullshit on occasion. He had to learn some new things, relearn others, but even so he finds himself easing slowly into this new world, different from anything he had known previously.

Steve uses “full immunity and means” a little too loosely, thrusts it out front like his badge as he barrels through walls and kicks down doorways. It’s the only way he knows how to get things _done_ , after all. Even here the rules follow him, hard to forget with Danny nattering incessantly in his ear about due process and standard regulations. He smiles at Danny during those times, and decides wisely to choose his battles.    

Some rules are universal, the ones you don’t ignore. You get your partner’s back, trust he has yours. You put family first, duty second. You follow the evidence, no matter where it leads. You separate the good guys from the bad, know implicitly which side you’re on. You take care of your own.

But somehow, in the year he’s been with Five-0, Steve’s blown past so many doors he has trouble remembering which one he came through first. Even here there are lines in the sand, but he’s dived across so many of them they’ve turned into vague smudges, blurring and bleeding into one tangled web. Rules he once thought sacrosanct he discovered could turn pliant, able to be molded and chiseled at will.

Yet because of this, he makes sure there are other lines, new ones he’s drawn around himself and the people around him in an attempt to regain his bearings. These are the ones he eyes warily, calculates dimensions of, and reminds himself to remember his footing. 

So Steve watches himself and his team carefully, watches one member in particular, and finds himself struggling to make his way back to a world that once fit neatly into borders and parameters, a familiar one where victory hinged on discipline and the tools he brought to the table.

There are some lines you cross that you can’t get back over. Some lines you cross where you lose your way back home.

* * *

The first inkling Steve gets that his new job might be a bit more than he bargained for is when he gets a call from HPD dispatch informing him that there is a situation developing with Detective Chin Ho Kelly. It starts to sink in when he rushes across the police line with Danny to find Chin on the ground, a bomb strapped around his neck, and Victor Hesse on the other end of the phone.

Steve’s been in these situations before; prepped and drilled for this exact eventuality, but when it was your own man kneeling there, all that goes out the window for the first ten seconds as your brain tries to catch up to reality. Steve feels the beginnings of an all-too-familiar dread rising inside him, but another part of his mind is already analyzing the situation, synapses zinging away at millions of possibilities, and years of honed training and instinct have him leaning into that cool, detached part of himself, relying on it to clear away everything else.

Even as Kono runs up, terror transparent in her eyes, the initial panic has been replaced by a cold, smoldering fury in Steve’s chest. It only takes a second for Steve to reach a decision when Chin tells them about the asset forfeiture locker, and as he meets Kono’s eyes across from Chin, fiery and resolute, he makes the call.

“I’m just trying to measure the level of insanity we’re dealing with?” Danny asks him.

“High. Very high,” Steve answers, and it’s a blessed relief not to have to sit there helplessly and think, but to jump into action and fucking _do_ something. Even if that something was plotting the theft of ten million dollars, but Steve was never one to look back and agonize over decisions he’s already made. He plots a course and takes it, and deals with whatever consequences as they come.

Kono is the one who gets in the car with him, goes along with his plan to break into the asset forfeiture locker without a word. The silence in the car is taut and wired, but the set of Kono’s jaw and the wildness in her expression mirrors his own, and he knows that there is nothing to do but move forward. Back at the office, money in hand and preparing to go meet Hesse, Steve hands Kono a sniper rifle.

“Can you handle one of these?” he asks.

Kono merely takes the rifle out of his hands mutely, steel in her eyes. Steve notices her white-knuckled grip, the set of her shoulders, and he touches her elbow gently.

“We’re going to get Chin back,” he tells her, as she swallows visibly and jerks her head in a nod.

Forty-five minutes later it’s all over, and he senses rather than sees her come up beside him. Together they stand there numbly, watching Chin’s ten-million-dollar ransom go up in flames.

That night they all find themselves at Chin’s house, mostly because, Steve thinks, there lay an unspoken desire on all their parts to reassure themselves that Chin was whole and intact; that Five-0 had come this close to disaster today and escaped unscathed. The events of the day have left Danny giddy and louder than usual, as he slaps Chin on the back and hands out Longboards. Danny quips a one-liner that has Chin, still looking pallid through his tanned complexion, crack a grin, and Kono’s lips quirk up behind her beer bottle, although Steve doesn’t miss the way she hovers unobtrusively over her cousin, eyes never leaving his face. Steve leans back against the kitchen counter, watches his team, and feels something like gratitude flood through him.

“Guys, as much as I appreciate you baby-sitting me, it’s been a long day and I need to hit the sack,” Chin finally says, and he looks bone-weary in the way Steve knows that only a near brush with death can bring.

They file out of his house, saying their tired goodbyes, and Danny takes off in the Camaro. Kono looks at Steve. “Give me a ride back home, boss? I rode here with Chin. Didn’t want him to drive, you know, after – after everything.” Her voice comes out thicker than normal, and Steve nods in understanding.

“Yeah, of course.”

The silence in his truck as they drive is a world apart from the tense, adrenaline-fueled one that filled it hours earlier. It’s turned into something opaque, draining, settling over them like a heavy blanket, flowing and filtering into the creases and spaces between. It’s late, but the night still feels unfinished, somehow, to Steve, and he glances over at Kono, who’s leaning against the window and looking out at the quiet streets.

Feeling his gaze, Kono turns and shoots him a thin smile, and he reads the same sense of restlessness in the tightness around her mouth, in the clench of her fingers against the edge of the seat. Five blocks from her house she directs him into a beach parking lot, and that’s how they find themselves sitting on his truck bed, legs dangling over the side, a six-pack of Longboards beside them.

Steve lets the sound of breaking waves and the muted radiance of the moonlit night wash over him, and the silence that lay between them stretches its arms and lifts off into the balmy ocean breeze.

“Thanks for earlier. Telling me that we were going to get Chin back,” Kono murmurs.

Steve looks over at her.  “It was the only possible outcome,” he tells her, simply.

Kono looks down, hair sweeping across her face, thumb idly scraping at the label of her bottle. “When I blew out my knee, found out my pro surfing career was over, I kind of went off the deep end for a while,” Kono begins, voice low, and Steve has to strain to hear above the crash of the surf.

“I moved back home with my parents but I was going crazy, and Chin let me stay with him for weeks at a time. I went off on a binge – partying, drinking, god knows what else – Chin would head out the door on his way to work in the morning and bump into me just stumbling home, incoherent. On the weekends he would barely even see me, but there would always be a meal of some kind on the table or in the fridge, a note telling me where he was in case I came home to find him gone. There were a few times when he even had to come pick me up from whatever shithole I ended up in because I was too fucked up.”

Kono takes a deep breath. “He never said anything about what I was doing, not once. Even when I got burned out from all the hard partying and stayed in bed for days at a time, he would check in on me, but left me alone, gave me the space I needed to mourn or grieve for what I had lost. I think he knew that when I was ready, I would talk.”

Steve listens to Kono, absorbs the gentle cadence and rhythm of her voice, and realizes that this is a story she probably hasn’t told many people.

“So what happened?” he asks after a moment’s silence, his voice gruffer than he intended it.

Kono smiles softly, looking out across the hushed stretch of beach. “I thought for a long time. Then one day I stepped out of my room, and asked Chin what it took to join HPD. And every step since he’s been showing me the way.”

Steve takes a long swig of his beer and leans back on his elbows. He tries to read the meaning behind Kono’s words, the things she was trying to say about herself, and Chin, what he meant to her and what losing him might cost her, and for one fleetingly clear, almost painfully lucid moment, Steve is fiercely glad he had chosen to come home, had taken the steps necessary to bring him to this new family, to this moment _(here)._ Today was the first day he had really crossed a line – a _real_ line – saw its walls and perimeters and chose to deliberately break into it, but if it led him to this second, Chin safe asleep in his apartment; Danny at home with his daughter; Kono next to him in companionable silence, wind shifting strands of her hair and both of them watching the sea and sand; then he would gladly pay whatever price required.

“Hey,” Steve eventually says to her, clearing his throat. “With everything that happened, I meant to tell you – that shot you took was aces. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Kono doesn’t say anything, just lifts her bottle and clinks it against his lightly. They stay that way, drinking their way through the six-pack, until the sun peaks over the horizon and reaches blossoming tendrils of pink and gold across a milky sky.

* * *

The second time Steve crosses a line is when he picks the lock to the governor’s mansion and finds himself breaking into yet another place that would most certainly cost him some quality time in a cell if caught.

He’s definitely making a habit of this, Steve reflects to himself ruefully, before he climbs the stairs, breaks into the governor’s desk, and uncovers the photos that change everything.

By the time he confronts the governor, Steve is acting mostly on emotion and instinct, and he doesn’t have much of an extraction plan except for a vague notion that he would get her to confess or fight his way out. Having pointed a gun at the governor’s head, he could pretty much kiss his badge and “full immunity and means” goodbye, but Steve brushes those thoughts to the peripheral of his mind and lasers his focus on the shifting of her eyes, the movement and location of her hands, as he charges – no, fucking bulldozes – over the line. 

He’s so focused that he barely registers the sound of someone else creeping into the room, and then there is nothing but the searing pain of an electric shock, sharp, against his neck.

* * *

In his cell, the only thing Steve has is time. Seconds and minutes from Steve’s life crawl by with apocalyptic slowness, replaying over and over in his head like a jerky film reel. His father’s voice over a phone line. The crack of a gunshot, the ringing left in his ears even half a world away. Mary Ann’s retreating back as she boards a plane. The bite of cold metal around his wrists, Chin’s impassive face. The fear in Kono’s eyes across the booking room.  

The first few days it’s Danny who comes to visit him every day, louder and more animated than normal. Steve knows that Danny is worried; that his voluble updates and status reports are intended to reassure Steve, but all he can dully register is the flourish and flurry of Danny’s gesticulations through the glass, as the tangled coil of wrath and vengeance deep in Steve’s chest glows a tiny bit brighter.

He’s slightly surprised to sit down one day and find Kono on the other side of the window, gamely flashing him a dimpled smile.

“Howzit, boss?”

She looks a little more haggard than the last time he saw her, under the garish fluorescent lighting of HPD, but the fear is gone from her eyes and Steve can’t help the keen surge of relief that flows through him at seeing her in front of him, free and unhurt.

“Kono. You okay? Are you…back?” Steve asks through the phone, endeavoring to get a handle on his jumbled thoughts.

Kono shrugs resignedly. “Suspended. Pending an IA investigation.”

“Shit. I–I’m really sorry,” Steve says lamely, that tight ball flaring intensely against his ribcage, tempered with something that feels suspiciously like guilt. He’s so frustrated he wants to punch something. He’s in a fucking hole, Kono’s out of the game, Danny and Chin are running down dead-end leads, and Wo Fat was running free out there, probably laughing his ass off.

“I should be asking you. You okay in there?” Kono raises her eyebrows, looking pointedly at the heavily tattooed, scarred inmate twice the size of Steve sitting two seats over.

“I went through BUD/S. This is a walk in the park,” Steve deadpans, and Kono rolls her eyes good-naturedly. 

“Either way, you look like shit, boss. We’ll have to get you out of there soon.”

“You didn’t really have to come,” Steve offers, even though a small corner of him he doesn’t want to think too closely about has been inordinately glad to sit here in front of her, for a little while.

“Please, brah. Someone had to make sure you hadn’t taken out the entire convict population by now.” Kono gives him a crooked grin and Steve attempts to match it.  “Hang in there,” she says quietly, into the phone.

“Yeah. You too,” he replies, and tries hard not to pay attention to the sinuous grace of her long legs as she turns to get up and leave.

* * *

The night Five-0 gets reinstated by the new governor, they end up at a local bar, a continuation of their impromptu celebration earlier in the office. After everything that’s happened, after all the adrenaline-fueled mania of the past few days, Steve is in surprisingly good spirits. There’s a budding unease that prison might have etched the shadows in his heart into sharper relief, but tonight at least he can believe that things are going to be okay, that everything can be salvaged and put back together again.

Steve laughs out loud as Jenna challenges Kamekona to a shot contest and the big Hawaiian falls unexpectedly behind on the fourth one, and he lets the palpable sense of release and liberation engulf him. Danny hands him another tequila shot and he takes it alongside his partner and Chin, enjoying the beginnings of a slight buzz. He knows the inevitable crash that comes after being constantly on edge for such a prolonged period is just around the corner, but he’s holding it at bay for now.

Sensing someone missing, Steve glances around and spies Kono perched at a table in a corner, picking absently at the label on an empty beer bottle and looking lost in thought. Steve makes his way over to her and deposits two shots and Longboards on the table.

“I think you’re falling behind,” he informs her, nodding at her empty drink. “I seem to remember someone telling me once that they used to be quite the partier.”

Kono looks up at him and grins. “You heard right. I could still probably drink you under the table.”     

“Is that a challenge I hear?” Steve quirks an eyebrow at her.

“I would never presume to challenge you, _commander_ ,” Kono smirks, taking a long swig from her new bottle.

A burst of raucous laughter from the rest of the group by the bar draws their attention, and Steve observes Chin gazing over curiously at them. Kono smiles fondly in his direction. “It’s nice to be together again,” she says offhandedly, but Steve doesn’t miss the wistful note in her voice.

“Hey. You’ll get your badge back. We’ll figure something out,” Steve says softly, involuntarily leaning closer towards her.

“Yeah,” Kono grimaces momentarily, then straightens up, brightening. “So what was that you mentioned earlier about undercover work?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure we could find a use for your expertise, off the books,” Steve winks at her conspiratorially.

“By which you better not mean dressing up in skimpy outfits like I’ve done for every other undercover op,” she scoffs. “I think it’s past time I’ve paid my dues. In fact, I’m graduating myself. The new girl can do those ones from now on.”

“Jenna?” Steve looks over at the woman in question, who at the moment was snorting with mirth at something Kamekona had just said. “I don’t know,” Steve frowns doubtfully. “I’m not sure she would be able to pull it off with quite the same...flair.”

Kono reaches for her shot glass, tips her head back and takes it clean, and Steve finds himself watching the curve of her throat, the smooth angles of her collarbones under the dim lighting. She slams her glass down, catches him looking at her, and smiles slowly, suggestively.

“Are you flirting with me, McGarrett?” Her voice is throaty, subtly teasing.

He downs his own shot smoothly, then meets her eyes steadily. “You tell me.”

Steve is used to thinking of Kono as the rookie of the group, just another team member _(subordinate)_ , another one of the boys who only happens to look like a girl, but of late he’s having difficulty shoving her back into those established confines and definitions. He keeps catching little, unexpected things about her that throw him off guard: the dimple in her left cheek, the infectious, entrancing lilt of her laugh, her willingness to go far beyond her call of duty, her fervent loyalty to those she calls family. Her stubborn recklessness, breathtakingly familiar. Her tough-as-nails exterior; her slip of vulnerability on a serene Hawaiian night, beside the sea.

He doesn’t know if it’s the potent mix of alcohol invading his senses at last, the pounding throb of bass that envelops them in their darkened corner, or simply the afterburn of dealing with weeks of fucked up madness, but Steve draws nearer until he’s pressed up tight in her space, arm brushing hers, just close enough to know that she smells of coconut and a hint of something heady, like the ocean. He hears the slight catch of her breath, notices the way her eyes flicker down to his lips, sending a low rumble of anticipation thrumming through him. He has just enough faculty to register faintly that this – _this_ – would be like throwing a burning match onto an explosive fuse, like storming his way through a meticulously built, heavily fortified military barricade, a place there was no going back from, but he’s already bending towards her, the spiked beating of his heart a muted roar in his ears.

Until Kono presses a palm against his chest and shakes her head imperceptibly, _once, twice_ , each a slash that goes straight to his gut.

“Not here, Steve,” she whispers, barely discernible over the music. “Not like this.” She looks at him for a long moment, expression unreadable, before she swings her legs off the stool and walks away.

He watches in suspended disbelief as she makes her way over to the rest of the group, sees her put a hand on Chin’s arm and say something before she exits the bar. Chin meets his eyes across the distance, but Steve can’t be bothered to figure out whether that’s anger or goddamn _pity_ in his eyes, because that’s when the crash finally comes, exhaustion flooding his system so stark and sudden Steve drops his head down into his hands.

“Fuck,” he groans.


	2. Chapter 2

In the weeks that follow Steve throws himself into work, tries to make up for lost time. He’s almost startled to find how easy it is to jump back into business as usual for the most part, and he has his hands full dealing with a stack of new cases. Of course, there are some things that are markedly different: the appointment of a former Homeland Security officer to the task force by the governor has him testing the waters of how much he can still get away with; what boundaries can be toed and what other borders need to be erased, re-measured and realigned.

There’s also that conspicuously missing presence on the team. Sometimes Steve glances up from his desk, expecting to see a dark head bent over the computer console, fingers flying across the keypad, but he glimpses a flash of Lori’s blonde instead. Or he’ll catch himself seconds away from knocking on Kono’s office door, wanting to ask her opinion on something, before he’s confronted with an empty desk, stacked with neat piles of manila folders. One late night at headquarters, he even winds up in her office, searching for a blank stack of incidence reports. Feeling a slight twinge of guilt, Steve opens one of Kono’s drawers and finds her Kel-Tec laying there instead, the graduation gift he had given her a year ago, a relic from a time when everything had seemed so simple and straightforward and Five-0 was on a mission to save the world.

That night at the bar still burns in the back of his mind, and every time a memory of it surfaces, unbidden, he feels an uncomfortable stab of unease, of chagrin or remorse or something else he doesn’t really want to name. Steve’s done some pretty reckless things during his time as Lieutenant Commander of Five-0, but crossing over into someone other than Kono’s commanding officer ventured too dangerously into shaky territory, even for him – especially in the shadows of some seedy bar. There are rules and principles, and Steve thinks wryly that every so often they’re there for a reason. He doesn’t know what the hell he was even thinking, and some part of him is relieved not to have seen her since that night, not to have to look into her eyes and see what? _(Mortification, condemnation, rejection.)_

So Steve does what he does best: he makes a call, picks a path and strikes ahead on it. He chooses to give them both the time and room to move forward, to clear the slate, redraw those lines. He chooses to let things lie, trust that they would work themselves out, that Kono would come to him when she was ready. The others seem to follow his lead; Danny has a full plate with a pregnant Rachel walking out on him and being evicted from his apartment, and although Steve assumes Chin’s the only one in regular contact with Kono, he rarely mentions her name during work hours. Something nags at Steve though, a throbbing itch drumming somewhere within him that he can’t pinpoint enough to scratch, but if there’s one thing Steve’s a pro at it’s compartmentalizing, narrowing down his focus to get the job done. He’s a fucking Navy SEAL.

Then the case that lands across his desk has Kono involved front and center, and he can barely comprehend before that taut coil buried someplace inside him starts to fissure, a frothing, hissing concoction of frustration and fury and bewilderment seeping out. He bellows at Chin first, then at Danny and Lori to get their asses in gear and bring Kono in.

They manage to track her down, driving like a demon out of hell, and Steve cuts off her escape route, eases his tall frame out of his truck. Steve draws his gun and discovers his aim is unsteady for the first time in his life as he sees Kono lift her hands up from the wheel, bloodied, the beginnings of panic in her eyes. His own hands feel numb as she climbs slowly out of the car, and his first instinct is to walk up to her, shake her by the shoulders, ask her what the hell she’s doing, what she’s thinking, what the fuck kind of deep shit she’s gotten herself into – but there’s a dead body in her car, _(rules to follow)_ , and a haunted, feral cast to the set of her shoulders, warning against anyone approaching her.

His legs feel wooden, and the one thing he can’t seem to bring himself to do is to take the four steps over and restrain ( _touch)_ her _._

“Lori,” he bites out, and watches his newest team member slap cuffs on Kono as something in his gut writhes and snarls.

In the interrogation room he orders everyone out, and tries desperately to get a handle on the situation. He wants – _needs_ – her to open up, tell him what’s going on, and that fissure has rapidly turned into a fracture, bleeding a riot of emotion he thought he had long ago trained out of himself. He’s nearly shaking with the churning mess that squeezes out, a mixture of fear and guilt and confusion that comes from a place of deep uncertainty within him, somewhere he didn’t think existed anymore, after the death of his mother, the murder of his father, the severance from Mary Ann.

So he roars at her, gets up in her face, forgetting for a heated instant all his extensive expertise in interrogation techniques. But the wildness in Kono’s eyes is something he recognizes, and even though her stubborn defiance remains rigid, Steve can sense that hollow of doubt, layered beneath the walls she’s thrown up.

“Not like this,” Chin says to him, pulling him aside, and for a split second it’s almost as if Chin is throwing those words back in his face, except Steve knows that Chin wasn’t there, in that hazy, dark little corner of the bar.

The truth, when it comes out, doesn’t make him feel better. It pisses him off even more, the realization of how badly he had misread the situation and his inability to protect the rookie of his team; at the knowledge that while he was stuck in his own head with some inane notion of giving her “space”, she was sacrificing everything she held dear to protect _his_ badge, this family.

“We’re gonna be ready to move on your word,” Steve reassures her afterwards as they prepare to follow her into the field, acutely aware that it was too little, too late.

Kono focuses on him briefly. “I couldn’t ask for better backup,” she replies, but he can’t tell if it’s sarcasm or sincerity or a bit of both in her voice. The guilt leaves an acrid, pungent taste in his mouth.

Even decking Fryer later feels like an empty gesture.

* * *

Steve waits a couple of days before he approaches Kono, telling himself it was out of some sense of chivalric duty to give her time to rest and recover. He knows better than anyone how emotionally and physically taxing undercover work could be. Delving wholly into someone else’s life, perpetually being on edge and constantly thinking on your feet - it could take weeks before fully coming back to yourself. Although after the way things had gone down, he’s not sure whether Kono would be receptive to any advice he could offer at this point. Thankfully, she was only grazed by Delano’s bullet, but she had chosen to take a few days leave before rejoining Five-0.

At 10 p.m. on a Thursday night, Steve pulls up at Kono’s front door, a six-pack of Longboards in his hand. She answers after the sixth knock, silhouetted against the warm, cozy light of her living room.

“What are you doing here?” To her credit she doesn’t look surprised to see him, only narrows her eyes and braces herself against the doorway.

Steve hasn’t thought too far beyond the fact that he needed to see her, to reassure himself of something, to try to explain some other things.

“I uh, brought you this,” he says awkwardly, hoisting up the beer case, a peace offering she completely ignores.

He’s a little put off by the hostility radiating off her in waves, but determinedly presses on. “Can I come in?”

Kono moves aside reluctantly to let him pass. Inside, she turns to face him, arms crossed defiantly against her chest. “What do you want, Steve?”

Steve shifts uncomfortably. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He doesn’t even see the punch coming, a solid left cross that connects with his jaw with a resounding crack, snapping his head back, the beer case rolling out of his hands to the floor. She throws another right hook into his ribs, entirely disregarding the heavy layer of gauze taped to her right shoulder, pushing the air out of his lungs in a sudden rush. Steve’s seen Kono in action countless times, just never fully understood until now how much the receiving end could hurt.

Steve collects himself enough to see the third punch approaching, ducks under her arm but stumbles as she lifts a leg to block him.

“You hypocritical _asshole_ ,” she yells, blazing tall and incandescent with rage. “You arrogant, self-serving prick! You wanted to make sure I was _okay_? Where the fuck were you the past few weeks, when I actually needed someone to make sure I was okay? Too busy gallivanting around the islands, flirting with the newest rookie? Here’s _okay_ for you, you douchebag,” and Kono is coming at him again, fists swinging.

“Kono – Jesus, wait–” Steve moves to block her, arms holding her at bay, but her hits are wild, frenetic, and he realizes she’s crying, hard sobs that shake her entire body.

“I would take that money all over again, in a heartbeat, for Chin,” she chokes out. “But you were there too, and I had your back but you sure as hell chose to turn your back on me. Do you know that Chin was the only one to come visit me? The only one to even stop and wonder what I was up to?”

Steve opens his mouth, formulating a half-hearted defense, but Kono cuts him off, pointing a finger at him accusingly. “It’s not even that you didn’t call, or care, but the thing I really can’t wrap my head around is that you actually thought I had turned _dirty_. After all this time, after – after everything, how could you even think that? I never once believed you shot the governor, I fucking _visited_ you in jail, and what did you do? You had the new girl cuff me and threw me into an interrogation room. Do you know how humiliating that was?”

“Kono,” Steve falters. “Christ, you don’t understand, I–I was so stupid, I completely misunderstood–”

Kono raises a hand to wipe away her tears angrily, glaring at him to finish, and that tiny action sends a jolt straight into his chest, somehow more painful than all of her earlier punches combined.

“After that night at the bar, I figured I was the last person you wanted to hear from. I thought you needed some space. I thought I was doing the right thing,” Steve tries to clarify, hesitant and cautious, eyes pleading with her to understand. “I’m sorry.”

Kono stares at him in disbelief. “God,” she spits out, furiously. “You’re unbelievable. You’re such a complete idiot.”

“I am,” Steve agrees, clenching his jaw hard, feeling the sharp sting from her first ferocious hit. “I deserved all that. I should have known, I should have been there, but most importantly I should have had your back.”

“ _Ohana,_ ” Kono hisses, looking more sad now than irate. “We care for each other like family. Fuck you.”

Steve flounders desperately for the right words, ones that will tell her how uncertain he felt, how angry and scared, how unbelievably _sorry_ he is, but the only words he knows how to say get lodged in the back of his throat, thick and heavy on his tongue. “I fucked up, bad,” he manages finally. “I know I fucked up.” He offers them to her, laced with sorrow and regret, shadowed with all the thousands of words he doesn’t know how to express.

“Yeah, you did,” Kono answers in a flat voice, suddenly seeming small and depleted, all the fight bleaching out of her.

Steve reaches out tentatively, placing a hand on her arm. He feels her tense under his touch and recoils hastily.

“I can’t change what happened,” he ventures hesitantly. “But I promise you I won’t forget, and I can change where we go forward. Can you–will you let me?”

Kono lifts her eyes, searches his face at length. Then she walks over to the door and holds it open. “This is what space looks like, Steve,” she sighs, long and drawn out. “I think you should go. Take your beer with you.”

Steve scrubs a hand gingerly across his face, defeated, and picks up the case he dropped. Kono closes the door behind him, hard, and Steve is left standing on her front step, insides ringing hollow and bitter.

The third time he crosses a line, he wonders if this time the price might just be too high.

* * *

When Kono returns to the office, Danny and Chin go out of their way to welcome her back and make amends; Danny going so far as to buy her lunch from her favorite deli every day for a week until Kono threatens to reciprocate with pineapple pizza.

For his part, Steve does his best to respect her wishes about distance and space. The only thing he does do is spend the night before she returns cleaning out her Kel-Tec. He takes the gun apart, scrubs, polishes, oils and even replaces some used parts, until the compact little pistol practically shines, better than brand new. He returns the gun to her drawer, and hovers surreptitiously around her office the next day until he catches her open the drawer and see it. He watches her fall still, run her fingers lightly over it, pick it up briefly. She raises her head, meets his eyes through the glass, then snaps the drawer shut and looks away.

Working on new cases together, they are consummate professionals with one another, although the old sense of ease and camaraderie is gone, as if a puzzle piece has been lifted and a new one put in its place, its outline and edges not quite lining up. Kono talks to him about evidence and ballistics, but what’s missing is the teasing inflection in her voice, the gentle affection in her eyes.

Occasionally he’ll glimpse Kono in the break room with the others, eyes crinkling in laughter, and something in his stomach will twist at the familiarity and effortlessness on display. Steve can’t really bring himself to join them those times, walks back to his office instead and sits there at his desk. He rubs a knuckle absently against his chest, feeling the crack inside pulse and ache indiscernibly, willing it to mend.


	3. Chapter 3

Jenna calls him out of the blue and says she needs to talk to him, that it’s urgent. He’s happy to know she’s back on the island, but he hears the slight note of desperation in her voice and braces himself for bad news.

Turns out she’s found her fiancé, except he’s being held in North Korea and she wants Steve to go with her.

“I need someone there to watch my back. I need you.” Jenna’s eyes are wide and beseeching, and Steve is about to tell her he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, that she’s talking about North Korea here and that may be too insane and risky even for his questionable standards, but then he pauses.

_Ohana_ , he remembers, and swallows his words, tells Jenna she can count on him.

The click of a pistol being cocked echoes coldly around the small clearing as he’s knee-deep in dirt and dead foliage, miles from the South Korean border. When he turns around and is faced with the barrel of Jenna’s gun, it takes a while for the betrayal to sink in, because it’s so obvious, so _easy._ It doesn’t really start to hit Steve until he’s marching trussed and tethered in front of Wo Fat, and then he almost wants to laugh at the irony of it, at how doing the right thing and following the rules, at how finally keeping his word, would be his downfall.

Steve is tortured in periodic intervals, and he pushes like a soldier into that impassive part of himself, that hidden, secret corner of his mind carved by countless hours of training and clandestine ops. He’s played this game before, but he doesn’t remember it ever being quite so excruciatingly painful.

He should’ve seen this coming, been more vigilant, more guarded. He’s been off his game, lately, looking to play nice and color within the lines, wanting to just sit by the ocean and have a beer with a girl. Joe would probably say he’d gone soft, should’ve stayed back with the SEALs.

But here’s the thing: maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have grown soft around the edges, Steve thinks. He’s spent so much of his life learning how to close himself off to outside distractions, figuring out the extent he could narrow down his world to just himself and the limits of his own will, he thought he’d lost the ability to let people in. After everything – he’d forgotten what it was like to have a family. He’d thought joining Five-0 would be a means to an end, a way to avenge his father, but somewhere along the way he’s slipped into the shapes and patterns of his new life so seamlessly he has trouble remembering what life was like before, a jaded monotone of gray and black that pales against the sheer tropical brightness and intensity of Hawai’i.

He’s hanging from chains in a desolate room with no light or hope, a million miles from anywhere, and even while grimly contemplating the fact that this might be where his road ended, Steve can’t bring himself to regret coming here. He would have done the same for any of them, Danny or Chin or Kono, but right now he just misses them, Danny’s good-natured grousing, Chin’s cool levelheadedness, Kono’s luminous vibrancy. He thinks of Kono, and mostly he misses the lost opportunities, of discovering how to peel back her nuanced layers of self-assurance and vulnerability to reveal the edges and contours underneath, of seeing whether those lines would fit around his. Seeing if he could get the puzzle piece to finally match up; if she would let him.

He wishes he had told her.

He wants to go home.

They come back and beat him, asking questions he doesn’t have the answers to. The blows and kicks land with deadly precision on his face, his stomach, his torso. The smack of fist hitting flesh echoes loudly in his ears, and the lightning _crack_ of a snapped rib is deafening in the abrupt silence. Something in Steve snaps too, that rigidly twisted crevice in his chest, cracks splintering at last along its walls until it erupts outwards in bursts of colors and flashes so vivid they explode behind his eyelids. Just before blackness blessedly envelops him, he has one fleeting, aching flash of moonlight gleaming off dark hair, of warm brown eyes and a dimpled smile.

* * *

When he comes to, Jenna is dragged struggling feebly into the room. Steve’s insides are a shrunken, empty shell; he doesn’t have space left for anything in him, anger or bitterness or sorrow. He looks at Jenna out of dead eyes and only asks her why. Jenna is crying, and she tells him a story about her fiancé, and what actually hurts the most is he _gets_ it. He gets why she did what she did, and the terrifying thing is he’s not sure he wouldn’t have done the same if it had been his own father, his sister, _(her)._

“It wasn’t for nothing,” Jenna whispers as she tosses him the pin, right before she dies, and Steve finds out that he does have something left inside him after all, as he howls in shock and rage and anguish at Wo Fat.   

Jenna bought him a chance, but even escaping is futile; there’s nowhere to run but into gunpoint. Lying in the back of that truck, his brain’s pain receptors on fire, he thinks it’s over, that maybe Jenna died for nothing. Only that’s Danny’s face behind the tarpaulin amidst the _rat-tat-tat_ of gunfire, and although Steve’s having trouble comprehending how or why, somehow he’s being supported between the comforting solidness of Danny and Chin as a helicopter churns down.

There’s a group of familiar faces around him, but Steve’s having trouble focusing through the haze of distress and confusion. He tries to move his head, his entire body a blaze of agony, searching for an anchor, a glimpse of long dark hair, but all he feels is Lori’s arms around him, wrapping him close.

Onboard the chopper, safely skimming away over miles of untamed terrain, is when it starts to sink in that he’s free, that this nightmare might just be over. The sudden exhilaration sweeps over him like a tidal wave; Joe’s hand firm on his shoulder, Lori smiling at him, Danny dependably mustering up another joke, and Steve’s grinning so hard it hurts his face, feeling an overwhelming gratefulness towards them all, each and every one. Except the person he most wants to see isn’t there, and he can’t figure out why.

“You can thank me by being the best man at my wedding. I’m getting married,” Chin announces, and though there are cheers and whistles, Steve can’t help but think that some part of it feels wrong.

“Kono?” he finally manages to utter, trying to convey everything he wants to ask through just the syllables of her name.

The look Chin shoots him is both knowing and sympathetic. “First one I told, brah. She’s running SAT/NAV on the ground. She’ll be there soon.”

Steve nods blearily, eyes drifting closed. The pain and exhaustion catch up to him at last and he’s out like a light.

* * *

Steve wakes up to a distant rumbling beneath his body and a pounding migraine behind his forehead. It takes him a minute through his grogginess to realize he’s strapped into a seat, various body parts wrapped snugly with gauze. He brings a hand to his taped ribs and grunts in discomfort. Someone shifts in the seat beside him, and he looks over to find Kono rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, peering at him in concern.

Steve feels a rush of something – gratitude, delight – at seeing her, a slow blossoming in his chest. “Hey,” he says softly.

“Hey.” Kono smiles shyly at him, worry and apprehension barely concealed in her eyes. “You gave us quite a scare, boss.”

“Didn’t mean to. Sorry,” Steve murmurs, and involuntarily reaches out a hand to her face, delicately, before the soreness in his arm becomes too much to bear.

They stare at each other for a few quiet seconds, before Kono clears her throat and asks, “How you doing? You have some pretty nasty battle wounds there.”

“I’m better, now,” Steve answers honestly, because all of a sudden his aches and pains are mostly forgotten, replaced by a radiant contentment. “Where–where are we?”

“On a plane headed back to O’ahu from our successful humanitarian mission,” Kono replies with a touch of her familiar cheek, leaning back in her seat to stretch her arms and legs, lean and lithe.

Steve swallows hard, and glances around to see Danny asleep in an adjacent seat, Chin deep in conversation with Joe a few rows over. An unexpected swell of dizziness smashes over him and he groans with sudden nausea. Kono immediately bends over him, placing a cool hand against his forehand.

“You ok? We had a medic check you out in South Korea, but we need to get you to a hospital on the island. You should rest.”

Steve can hear the anxiety in her voice, and he tries to nod, tell her he’s okay, really, but he’s seeing spots across his vision and senses another encroaching wave of nausea. He closes his eyes, giving in to the wooziness. Then an impulsive thought grips him, and he reaches unsteadily for Kono’s hand, clutching on.

“I remembered,” he struggles to tell her, words coming out slurred and garbled. “Ohana.”

Kono grasps his hand in return, fingers reassuring and strong. “I know.” She sounds shaky, breath hitched and jagged.

“’s want to go home,” Steve mumbles, barely conscious now.

“We are. We’re bringing you home, Steve.”

Just before the darkness overtakes him once more, he sees her smile at him again, and it feels like hope, fluttering against his ribcage.  

* * *

Steve wakes up to a crystal clear Saturday morning several days later, and idles away a few minutes gazing out at the stunning cerulean of the sky, safe in his own bed.

He spends a perfect morning in paradise: going for a walk along the beach, absorbing the languorous heat of the sun on his injured, healing body, listening to the comforting crash and pull of the ocean waves. He stops by Liliha Bakery for a coco puff, then drives around aimlessly on tranquil, palm tree-lined streets until he meets Danny for lunch over hot plates of loco moco. The colors and tastes of home seem more vibrant, _(real)_ somehow, and Steve relaxes into it, into the texture and blend of flavors in his mouth, into the friendly chatter of pidgin around them, into the familiar arc and sweep of Danny’s hands as he gestures dramatically over his food. They pay Kamekona a visit at his shaved ice stand afterwards, and then Steve heads home, feeling more lighthearted and at peace than he has in a long time.

There’s something he’s been putting off doing, wanting to be in the right state of mind. The thought nags at him now, and he figures he’s already let enough days go by as it is. Steve pulls out his phone and calls a contact at Langley, and waits impatiently as he gets re-routed several times before he finally tracks down Jenna’s former boss at the CIA. After a brief conversation, Steve finds out that Jenna’s parents are both deceased, but he has a number for her sister.

He steels himself, dials the number. It’s never an easy call to make, even when the person on the other end of the line or other side of the door is a complete stranger, but this is different because for a little while, however the way it ended, Jenna was one of theirs.

Her sister picks up, and Steve speaks. “Ms. Kaye, my name is Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett of the Hawaii Five-0 task force. I’m calling about Jenna,” he begins.

It’s a lengthy, awkward conversation, full of bewilderment and tearful silences. He doesn’t tell her the whole truth, but he tells her enough to make it matter. He’s still on the phone when his doorbell rings. Steve crosses the hall and answers it to find Kono standing outside, lifting a six-pack of cold Longboards sheepishly.

He’s taken aback to see her yet he can’t stop the small thrill of pleasure that runs through him, despite the task he’s in the middle of. He motions her in, points to the phone against his ear, and Kono nods and bustles into his kitchen.

“Can you tell me again, how she–she died?” Jenna’s sister asks, her voice trembling and breaking, a thousand miles away, over a tenuous phone line.

“She died trying to protect one of her teammates. She was loyal and courageous to the end,” Steve tells her. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” He knows all too well, even as he says the words, that it isn’t enough, that it will never be enough.

After the call ends, Steve releases a long breath and collects himself for a quick second, bracing himself against the edge of his coffee table. When he turns around, Kono is leaning against the kitchen doorway, looking straight at him. If she heard any of his conversation, she doesn’t say a word.

“Well,” Steve drawls. “This is a surprise.”

Kono arches an eyebrow at him, mouth quirking up around the edges. “So I realized we never did go through that pack you brought to my place the last time. What do you say? Have time for a round?”

Steve recognizes her words for what they are, Kono’s own way of extending an olive branch, and he grasps it gratefully.

“I might be able to fit you into my schedule.” Steve smiles slowly at her, and her answering grin, wide and dazzling, dimples in full view, curls in his stomach.

They drink round one out on the lana’i, side by side on two deck chairs, looking out upon the quiet stretch of beach in his backyard and the sun-drenched waters.

“Thank you,” Steve says, breaking the silence, “for coming to get me.”

Kono takes a sip of her beer and shrugs. “You made a promise to me once, about taking care of your own. We were just upholding our end of it.”

Steve chokes a little on his mouthful as the shame flares up again, hot and unrelenting. “Kono,” he starts tentatively, unsure whether this would end in additional bruises to his current collection. “I should’ve gotten you out, out of the whole IA and Fryer mess, when _I_ got out –”

“Steve.” Kono cuts him off with a touch to his arm, light yet insistent. “I didn’t come here to guilt trip you. You were right, we can’t change what happened, and I’m done dwelling on it. I wanted to tell you that I’m ready to move forward, and I meant to tell you that earlier, but you know – North Korea happened. And all I kept thinking was what if I didn’t get to tell you–” she stops, inhaling deeply, and turns her head to look at him. “The thing about ohana is, you forgive them, even when they fuck up.”

Steve’s throat tightens, and he grips his bottle a bit more firmly. “Yeah,” he replies, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“The one thing that took me the longest to get over,” Kono admits quietly, “was thinking you guys had forgotten me.”

The words cut into him, and Steve realizes with a pang how wrong he had been about everything. He’d been so busy scrutinizing boundaries and perimeters, blowing heedlessly past some while drawing painstaking boxes around others he’d been scrupulous not to overstep, he had completely missed what was in front of him. In his attempt to play by the rules and avoid crossing a line with Kono, he had unwittingly crossed an even bigger one.

“I couldn’t– could never do that to you,” he says huskily, pitched low. “Even when you were gone, that never happened.”

Kono squeezes his arm softly. “Okay,” she says.

The colors of the afternoon are slowly changing. The slanting rays of the sun turn the sand into a rich, honeyed yellow, the hue of the waves tinted a bruising indigo, sky and sea preparing for another magnificent Hawaiian sunset. Kono’s hand is still on his arm, the heat of her sinking into him, saturating skin and muscle and bone.

“So about moving forward,” she murmurs after a comfortable stillness, and he hears the possibility in her voice, the untold opportunities that aren’t lost but right here after all, tantalizingly in front of him.

Steve pauses, hesitates for a long while, hovering again on a perilous precipice, on the razor-sharp line between two certainties. “Things will change, might get messy,” he warns, quiet caution in his voice.

“Sometimes change can be a good thing.”

Steve watches Kono now, takes in the calm assurance in her eyes, the play of sunlight on her hair, and understands that at some point along the way, coming to a head in that bleak, forsaken room in North Korea, all the uncertainty and hesitation has bled out of him. What’s left is only this – clarity. There will be countless more things to come to terms with – fresh lines to cross, a new definition between him and Kono, Wo Fat still at large – but all that matters right now is _here_ , home on his lana’i, with the person beside him. Somewhere between all those lines, blending and jumbling together, he had found Kono.

He’s done with the shifting boundaries and acrobatics, now. No more reasons to turn away.

It feels like the most natural thing in the world for him to reach over and cup her cheek, trace his thumbs along the curve of her jaw.

“So…how about like this?” Steve asks her, searching her eyes, lips curling up in a smirk.

“Like this,” Kono affirms, breathlessly, just before he presses his lips against hers. The kiss is slow and smoldering, building into a quivering simmer in his belly, and he feels Kono’s arms wind tightly around him, slender fingers weaving through his hair. When he finally pulls away, he reads a lazy contentment, a graceful ease in the quiet lines of her body. She smiles at him, languid and bright against the setting sun, and Steve’s heart beats a hushed staccato deep within his chest. 

“We’ll figure it out,” she tells him simply, threading her fingers gently through his. Steve’s breath catches in his throat as his fingers tighten around hers, and he thinks that maybe some lines were always meant to be crossed.

 

-end-


End file.
